September 14, 2025
So Much For Mortgage Fraud? Lisa Cook’s Bank Records Undercut Trump’s Case
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb barred Trump from potentially removing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
On Sept. 9, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb barred Donald Trump from potentially removing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook in a move seen as protecting the central bank’s independence. Now, newly surfaced loan documents show that Cook listed an Atlanta property as a “vacation home,” contradicting earlier claims by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte that it was her primary residence.
According to NBC News, a 2021 loan summary from Bank-Fund Staff Federal Credit Union spells out that Cook’s application is for “Property Use: Vacation Home,” and not a primary residence.
In addition to this, another document, which NBC News noted is her “questionnaire for national security positions,” also listed the Atlanta address as a “2nd home,” but Pulte is clinging to his initial accusation of Cook, per a post to his X account.
“Dr. Cook represents herself as an extremely accomplished financial operator. If Dr. Cook solicited estimates as a vacation home and then entered into a mortgage agreement as a primary residence, that is extremely concerning, and in my opinion, evidences further intent to defraud,” Pulte wrote.
However, according to ProPublica, this rigorous standard is only applied to individuals who are in the way of the Trump administration, and not across the board. Furthermore, mortgage fraud, in such terms as Pulte has defined it, is not as black and white as he presents.
According to Jon Goodman, an attorney specializing in real estate at Frascona, Joiner, Goodman, and Greenstein, fraud has its own distinct legal definition. “Fraud requires the borrower to be aware that the borrower was making a false representation.”
MSNBC’s Legal Analyst Barbara McQuade was upfront about the as-of-yet unproven claims of Trump and Pulte that Cook engaged in mortgage fraud, saying on a Sept. 12 episode of The Last Word that this fight is “critically important” to the future of the United States.
“I can’t emphasize enough how important it is that we maintain the independence of the Federal Reserve. We set interest rates through the Federal Reserve based on the expertise of economists who are looking at the long-term interests of the United States, not the short-term political whims of the president,” McQuade, a former U.S. Attorney and a professor of law at Michigan State University, noted.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has appealed the decision and seeks an emergency ruling on the matter by Monday, ahead of a vote by the Fed on whether to cut interest rates.
Notably, Trump has not been shy about expressing his desires, threatening at various points to remove Fed Chair Jerome Powell if the Federal Reserve doesn’t cut federal interest rates.
According to Victoria Guida, an economics correspondent at Politico, the market is watching intently for any signs of abnormal behavior from the Fed, including less independent behavior than it has exhibited in the past.
As BNY Chief Economist of Investments, Vincent Reinhart, told Guida, “Concerns about central bank independence should be really important when inflation is high. That independence does grant them the ability to do something [politically] hard.”
Likewise, Tim Duy, chief economist at SGH Macro Advisors, noted Trump’s desire for a more pliable Federal Reserve. “Trump is seeking a Fed that will lower interest rates. We can view this attempted firing of Lisa Cook as a way to accelerate that process.”
According to Vox, the rate cut is likely to come, but it’s a double-edged sword, as Trump’s tariffs could also raise inflation as more companies pass on their costs to the average consumer, which points to the Fed perhaps making a smaller rate cut than Trump wants.
As Cameron Peters noted in his Aug. 26 newsletter, The Logoff, “The Fed is designed to be independent, and its governors serve nonrenewable 14-year terms to insulate them from partisan politics (Cook’s term, should she serve it out, will expire in 2038). But two of the seven Fed governors are already Trump appointees, and he’s currently filling a third vacancy; if he succeeds in replacing Cook, he would have a majority of the Fed board — and, potentially, a dangerous degree of power over the U.S. economy.”
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